


Merit

by SathInflection



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Ghosts, Houseless Elves - Freeform, Implied Elwing, M/M, Trick or Treat: Chocolate Box, Trick or Treat: Extra Trick, Undead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-26 10:59:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12555960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SathInflection/pseuds/SathInflection
Summary: Death puts Maedhros in poor company.





	Merit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



I can’t remember my name. But the Necromancer does.

He taunts me with it. He speaks my name, but all I feel is the buzzing of flies, and the sound of rotting flesh. I think that my sensations aren’t what they should be. Should I hear a body as it turns to soil? It’s been so long since I’ve had a body of my own.

“You should have answered the summons,  _moonlight scraped over an abandoned hill_ ,” says the Necromancer. “Perhaps I should not have neglected my own.”

“What would have happened?” I ask, over and over, because I forget. The Necromancer does not tire of answering my questions. He loves his own thoughts.

“An eternity of waiting. That’s the terrible thing,  _wolf choking on meat_. I am so, so much worse than you, and yet the Doomsman must mete out the same punishment to us both. Waiting. I’m much more creative. I would punish you by using your hair for harp strings, and your skin for a drum.”

I am not intimidated by the Necromancer. If he could do anything to me, he would have done it long ago. “Are you so much worse than me? I can hear children sobbing in the woods. I drove them there.”

“That’s not my favorite of your deeds,” replies the Necromancer. “I prefer the mother who leapt from a tower into the ocean, out of fear of you. I’m greatly interested in fear. You were remarkable at it.”

I don’t want to believe him. But I can recall so many battles, though every face is shadowed. The armor the soldiers wore is different than what I see now, staring out from borrowed eyes.

The Necromancer dangles my past in front of me, offers me scraps as if I were his hound. It is the greatest treasure I can imagine, to know who I am, no matter how terrible. He is houseless too, and less powerful than he believes. His domain is a single tower in a forest—how could he have performed the grand deeds he relates to me, boring me as I wait for him to tell me anything about myself?

“You let your beloved die,” he says. “All for a gem. And an oath you’ve forgotten.”

‘Oath’ is a word that burns. I know it should have followed me here, given me purpose in the dark. I will not ask about the oath. “I can’t remember loving anyone.”

“Neither can I,” replies the Necromancer, laughing at his own joke.

“What was he like?”

“Oh, so you remember a little. I didn’t know him very well—he was quite crushed by the time I got to him.” The Necromancer laughs again. I wish he had a neck to wring, and I had hands to wring it with.

Time is measureless. I cannot say how long it is until the Necromancer tells me, “One of your brothers is still alive.”

I rage. I possess one of the Necromancer’s few servants and smash some of his things, then fling the servant off the walls. He will not say another word about my brother. I think about leaving the Necromancer’s pathetic tower.

“Back to your old ways, _body unburied, left to crows_?” says the Necromancer. “You cannot make me fear you, not like your own kin did. Can you understand that, Kinslayer? That despite your great Enemy, it was innocents who feared you the most?”

He is a liar. This even I know. He twists the truth until it serves only himself. But he is not lying now, for I remember the sound of bird’s wings carrying a star. “Fear wasn’t what I wanted,” I say.

“It’s what you earned.”

And then he tells me nothing more.


End file.
